New investment in renewable energy through asset finance, share sales, venture capital and private equity fell by more than a third to $31.1 billion in the first three months of the 2011, Bloomberg reported.

That’s down from a record $47.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Low natural gas prices in the United States and subsidy cuts in Europe are putting downward pressure on investment activity, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

“The first quarter saw a bit of a hangover from the hectic investment activity seen in the final months of last year as financiers rushed to close deals to meet their internal targets or to catch feed-in tariffs due to expire in countries such as Germany, Italy and the Czech Republic,” said Michael Liebreich, CEO of Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Money flowing into wind farms, solar parks and other sources of renewable power was at the lowest amount since the first three months of 2009, the London-based researcher said.